I love going to afternoon tea, but I don't think there are any places in the city that do a perfectly good job (the Baccarat Hotel comes the closest). There's always some detail of the service that isn't considered enough -- the food is often mediocre, the tea is either not great or improperly brewed, and there are generally too many sweets, at least for me. I wanted to invite some of my friends over and treat them to a proper afternoon tea. I figured we'd have a better time at my place because we could linger for hours, and the food would meet all of my (apparently very high) standards. I brought it up one day and suddenly all four of us started rattling off ideas: Alice thought it would be pretty, so we had to take photos; Kathy thought she could get us some really good teas, she's a tea specialist, after all; Jee thought we should make this more of a thing and not just a casual gathering. Then I started going crazy styling photos in my head and planning menus for various themes. A few weeks later, we had the first official Tea at Three. A very fancy, grown-up tea party.

The table setting before I brought out the food. I'm in love with these teapots.

Photo by Kathy YL Chan

The teas we enjoyed. White, oolong, and black -- all were delicious, but if I had to pick just one, I'd say the white was my favorite.

Photo by Kathy YL Chan

The fun outfits we got to play dress-up in.

Photo by Jee Choe

And now, the food!

Photo by Jee Choe

Photo by Jee Choe

Photo by Alice Gao

Tea sandwiches hardly need any kind of recipe. These were particularly simple, and made mostly from greenmarket ingredients. Just in case you can't read the menu in the photo at the top, I made:

Shaved radishes with cultured butter (from Arethusa) and Maldon on French sourdough

Cucumber and avocado with spring onion, dill, and parsley on rye

Egg salad with ramps and pea shoots on brioche

Ham and gruyere with mustard and cornichons on baguette (I used an epi loaf for this so they'd be cute)

Photo by Kathy YL Chan

Photo by Kathy YL Chan

Sweets were also very simple. I made Alice Waters' cream scones, and added dried figs, sliced almonds, and vanilla bean. We served those with Devonshire cream, and jam from a producer friend of mine in Italy (see more of their products here). I also made tiny Meyer lemon tarts. I used this trusty recipe from Food52, and garnished them with cara cara orange and thyme. And my very favorite sweet: Rose Bakery's pistachio cake, which I'll share in another post.

Photo by Kathy YL Chan

Photo by Kathy YL Chan

Looking forward to many more Tea at Three parties. Huge thanks to our friends who helped make this one possible!

I got to use this pistachio pesto a few different ways. I slathered it on bread, added some to salad dressings and an aioli, and put the rest on pasta. I warmed up some olive oil, added asparagus coins, then the pesto after a few minutes. The pasta went in along with a little bit of the (very) salty cooking water, and I had lunch in less than 20 minutes. I might make a habit out of keeping fresh pesto in the fridge.

I found these stubby little carrots at the greenmarket and couldn't resist. Someone told me that they're called "Paris Market" carrots, which I love, but the name on the sign at union square said "baseball carrots." Whatever their name, I'm smitten.

I decided to roast them because I was cold and wanted something warm. I snipped off their greens, gave them a good scrub and threw together a pesto of whatever I had on hand while they were cooking. The pesto turned out to be kind of a happy accident -- I didn't use any measurements, grabbed parsley when I meant to only use cilantro, and threw in garlic scapes when I remembered I had them. I also made more than I needed for the carrots, so I got to use this pesto a few different ways. Here's a recipe with estimated measurements, but really, trust your judgement and taste as you go -- pesto hardly requires an exact recipe.

Pistachio Pesto

1 cup raw pistachos

1 cup fresh parsley and cilantro leaves, combined

2 garlic scapes, chopped

Olive oil

Sea salt

Heat some olive oil, about a tablespoon, in a pan over medium-high heat. When the oil is shimmery, add the chopped garlic scapes and sauté until tender. In the bowl of a food processor, add pistachios, parsley, cilantro, garlic scapes and the oil they were cooked in, and a generous pinch of salt. Give this a few pulses, then slowly add olive oil while the processor is running, until you get the consistency you like. Taste for salt along the way.